Page 57 - The Rough Guide to Panama (Travel Guide)

Panama City
Eastern Panama 1 Amador Causeway, a breezy breakwater offering fabulous views of the Canal and the 55 1
city skyline; Isla Taboga, the sleepy “Island of Flowers” an hour’s boat ride off the coast;
limits of a Latin American capital.
HIGHLIGHTS Casco Viejo Amador Causeway Cerro Ancón Parque Natural Metropolitano Panamá Viejo Nightlife Isla Taboga Tocumen International Airport N SHOPPING Centro de Artesanías PANAMA CITY AND AROUND or the Parque Natural Metropolitano, the only natural tropical rainfores
Brief history
Modern-day Panama City, named Panamá Nuevo, was established by the Spanish in
1673, two years after the original settlement, Panama Viejo, had been sacked by the
today as Casco Viejo, on a rocky peninsula jutting out into the bay, 8km southwest of the
2 Welsh buccaneer Henry Morgan (see p.293). The new city developed in the area known
old capital, and a more defendable and salubrious site than its swampy predecessor.
kilometres The Gold Rush and the railroad

0 Once the Spanish had rerouted their treasure fleet around Cape Horn in 1746,
Panama City’s commercial importance as a trade route slowly began to decline, only
substantially picking up again in the mid-nineteenth century due to the isthmus’s
popularity as a transit point in the California Gold Rush and the completion of the
V Í A T O C U M E N AV D O M I N G O D Í A Z Hipódromo Presidente C O R R E D O R S U R construction efforts, brought immense prosperity and a wealth of new cultural
Panama Railroad in 1855. The railroad, and subsequently the French and US canal
influences that transformed the city and its inhabitants, who by 1920 totalled almost
sixty thousand.
The Canal
A V J O S É A G U S T I N AR A N G O Arena Roberto Durán Remón Whereas the Canal, completed in 1914, confirmed Panama City’s importance
as a global trading centre, the outbreak of World War I, the waterway’s official
inauguration, opened the floodgates to large-scale US military occupation of the
Panama Canal Zone, the 8km strip of land either side of the waterway under
Colón (73km) US jurisdiction. During World War II, defence installations proliferated and the
Panamá Viejo continued to pour in, the lives of the city’s population were regulated by the US
predominantly US population topped one hundred thousand. Though other migrants
military in the adjacent Canal Zone, who controlled everything from refuse collection
Bahá’í House of Worship C O R R E D O R S U R CIFIC OCEAN and water supply to construction permits, and whose affluence and spending power
inevitably shaped commercial development. No surprise then that Panama City found
itself at the forefront of increasing nationalist sentiment that periodically erupted into
Colón (73km) AVEN I D A RICARDO J . A LFARO TUMB A M U ERTO T R A N S Í S T M I C A A V E N I D A S IMÓ N B O L Í V A R PARQUE RECREATIVO OMAR TORRIJOS AVENIDA BELISARIO PORRAS FRANCISCO V ÍA ISRAEL VÍA CINCUENTENAR IO Centro de Convenciones ATLAPA A P viole
the Canal had been assured, in the canal treaty of 1977, could the capital, and the
country, start to plan its own path.
SAN
AV C EN T R AL ESPA Ñ A
Estadio Nacional Rodney Carew PARQUE NATURAL METROPOLITANO EL DORADO CORRE D O R N O R T E AV JUAN P ABLO II EL CANGREJO VÍA BRASIL BELLA CALLE 5O VISTA Multiplaza PUNTA Pacífica PAITILLA Bahía de Panamá SEE ‘CENTRAL PANAMA CITY’ MAP FOR DETAILS Modern times
The introduction of banking secrecy laws in the 1970s led to the rapid expansion of
the financial services sector, including an influx of narco-dollars. Despite the tightening
of banking regulations, El Cangrejo remains a hive of intrigue. Some of the luxury
high-rise apartments there and in Punta Paitilla, and further east in Punta Pacífica and
Costa del Este, stand empty, the astronomical rents paid by their fictitious occupants
providing a useful means of laundering money.
The handover of the last US bases to Panamanian control at the end of 1999 released
Gamboa (20km) & Colón (75km) Pedro Miguel Ciudad de Saber (City of Knowledge) AV E N I D A G A I L L A R D SENAFRONT Corozal Passenger Terminal (Panama Canal Railway Company) COROZAL Albrook Airport AV DE LA AMISTA D Albrook Mall Cerro Ancón (199m) SEE ‘CERRO ANCÓN CASCO
its spread inland is still checked by the backdrop of hills that form the protected
Panama Canal Basin. This has resulted in ever increasing traffic congestion; in response,
millions of dollars have been recently spent on a metro line – Central America’s first –
MAP FOR DETAILS
& BALBOA’
and the Cinta Costera, a four-lane highway around the Bahía de Panama, which
AMADOR CAUSEWAY
includes a controversial ring road around Casco Viejo. A second metro line is planned
Miraflores
Locks
Cocolí Locks Locks Panama Canal Western Panama BALBOA BRIDGE OF THE AMERICAS PUENTE DE LAS AMÉRICAS Balboa Yacht Club Biomuseo Isla Naos Punta Culebra Nature Centre and further funds have been earmarked for another bridge over the Canal, which
should also help extend the metro westwards.
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